Evernote CEO Phil Libin Shares the Power of the Freemium Model | Fast Company
RE: Google Apps Standard Edition
From Google:
“In experimenting with a number of different landing page layouts, the link to Standard Edition was inadvertently dropped from one of the variations. We are in the process of restoring it and you should see it soon. We have no intention of eliminating Google Apps Standard Edition, and are sorry for the confusion.”
Bait and Switch? -OR Just- Realistic monetization?
Google Apps for a domain, a service that lets users that own a domain, like say Sztul.com, host email (gmail style), a calander, online documents, a start page and more is now a paid service.
If you go to http://google.com/apps you will see that now it costs $50/user per year after a 30 day free trial. It used to be free (as in beer) for up to 50 users. hmmm…
I guess I am glad I have several domains setup with them already so I seemingly don’t have to pay for anything (as of now).
On the one hand I think it makes sense to have this service as a freemium service (ie a free version and a paid version) BUT I will end this post with saying GOOD FOR GOOGLE! In reality they SHOULD charge for this service. It is a valuable set of tools (an online Word, Powerpoint, Outlook etc) and $50 / user / year is the going rate I guess.
…the Internet allows an entrepreneur to enter a market with a free offering because the costs of doing so are not astronomical. And most entrpreneurs who take this approach will maintain an attractive free offering of their basic service forever. But that doesn’t mean that everything they offer will be free. That’s the whole point of freemium. Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid. But if you don’t start with free on the Internet, most companies will never get paid.
Very interesting topic and well said by Fred Wilson.
